Ellen Rothenberg
Full visit: September 11-15, 2023
Mini visit: September 29 – October 1, 2022

• Distinguished Professor of Biology, California Institute of Technology
• ADW-PAL term: 2021-27
• Subject Area: Life Sciences
• Faculty host: Brian Rudd (Associate Professor of Immunology, Dept. of Microbiology and Immunology)
• Faculty co-host: Andrew Grimson (Associate Professor, Dept. of Molecular Biology and Genetics)

Ellen Rothenberg is Distinguished Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.  She studies gene regulation and development of T lymphocytes, gene networks controlling hematopoietic cell fates, and mechanisms underlying the dynamics of single-cell developmental decisions. She has been elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Member of the National Academy of Sciences. She was also selected for the inaugural class of Distinguished Fellows of the American Association of Immunologists.

Born in Massachusetts into an academic family, she grew up mostly in the Chicago and Boston areas.  She received her bachelor’s degree in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard University and her Ph.D. on retroviral DNA replication from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She moved to study T-cell development with a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and an Assistant Research Professorship at The Salk Institute. She came to Caltech in 1982 and rose to become Albert Billings Ruddock Professor in 2007, then Distinguished Professor in 2021. At Caltech, she won the Richard P. Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching (2016) and eight other teaching awards (1988-2014), and has taught internationally on immunology, developmental biology, and gene regulatory networks. 

She has also organized multiple international conferences in immunology and systems biology and has served on Scientific Advisory Boards for US and international research institutes, Editorial Boards, American Association of Immunologists committees, and grant review panels for NIH and other organizations. She is also a Scientific Advisory Board member for Century Therapeutics, and has consulted or advised for A2 Biotherapeutics and for Kite Pharma.